It might have a good chance. But I don't think people want Facebook to have an effective monopoly of social networking (other than Tik Tok, which state governments and probably eventually the federal government will take care of in the US)

Unfortunately most people will not think about the privacy implications. If you tell them they will say something like: "Oh, yeah. But I want to use this. Will it really matter ?" and then think no more about it once their mate tells them that they have put up a message on Threads.

There are many reason why Threads might fail; privacy is not one of them -- unfortunately.

> There are many reason why Threads might fail; privacy is not one of them -- unfortunately.

I remember a huge amount of fuss about the WhatsApp privacy changes. The end result is that I have a few friends who use Threema, Signal etc (hence having the apps on my phone) and most people still use WhatsApp.

Yes, there was outrage and then most people forgot. But Facebook has still not implemented the proposed changes.

is still Evil.

Clearly his Muskiness doesn't want non-paying users - I imagine twitter's landlords feel much the same. But there's certain logic in it. Removing - or inconveniencing until they remove themselves - non-payers reduces load and removes reliance on advertising,, thus enabling his Muskiness do as he pleases without being beholden to advertiser's. Of course, the remaining user might not pay enough to be profitable.

Musk torching the building while Zuckerborg opens up a shiny new gin parlour opposite is absolute 4D chess. Can't fail. If anyone doubts that then they're not a rocket scientist like Musk totally is.

Will the promised gin parlour come with a thunderdome for cage-fighting?..Preferrably of the "Two billionaire wankers enter, none will come out" -style?

Edit: Spellchecking

Dunno. The pros and other paying Twits are probably relying on a significant chunk of non-paying users to make their money. The ad-slingers who rely on sheer numbers of viewers to get their hit rate will be less happy and I imagine (don't know why) that people paying for their Twitter a/c will be less interested/susceptible to advertising. There's no such thing as an influencer if there's no one to be influenced.

i.e. _all_ other info, all we can get that we don't already have. And your pets.

Yeah. Thing's barely started and already it's sucking your data like there's no tomorrow.

My sexual orientation and political beliefs ? For a chat service ?

No thank you. Another site I'll stay away from.

I think political beliefs and sexual orientation are 90% of what people post there anyway

Now all those unhappy Anti-Elon Twitterati persons can rejoice as they have a new wonderful alternative. Mark loves strong ideological voices, what's not to like...

No longer will it be necessary to vent ones spleen on El Reg because Twitter doesn't agree with your their ideology.

Oh happy days....

Funny how tribalistic people are about their preferred social media platform. One of those Yes Minister irregular verbs: "I am expressing my opinion, you are ranting, they are a dribbling idiot".

For those of us who use Twitter for work, it has been a decent way to discover a pretty good community - though there's no doubt that Musk's behaviour has had a serious impact on the number of active users. If Zuck provides a good platform to reach out to like minded people, then great. For all that people whinge and moan about these services (your personal details aren't that precious, precious), they do actually help a lot of their users, from personal support between friends, to communities and businesses. Mastodon certainly isn't a better technical solution than Twitter, so a little more competition is welcome.

> For those of us who use Twitter for work, it has been a decent way to discover a pretty good community

Yeah, it used to be great. You'd see loads of interesting stuff posted by the leaders in the field. In my line of work, the majority of the big players are academics, so when Trump & Brexit happened, the platform turned into frustrated ranting. It kind of recovered from that, but now when I log on I see almost no posts at all.

You do realise that we have moved on since Trump and Brexit , or do you prefer to perpetually live in the past ?

Yeah, Biden, Sunak and Ukraine. Such an enormous improvement.

Where do you get your news from?

I think you missed the word "now" in the OP.

It's not really that funny: people are socially tribal so it's hardly surprising their online activity reflects this. Twitter was actually rather less tribal than most with a wide range of interest groups largely interacting within their respective groups but visible to anyone who might have a passing interest. It was actively promoted in the UK academic community as a means of engaging both with other academics and with the general public. Although there was always politics, it too was largely confined to the anoraks - politicians and journalists. Opinionated loud-mouths might have got the headlines, but they were the minority.

Old Twitter was no doubt overstaffed, but was economically sustainable within modest ambitions. Modest ambitions, unfortunately, were not enough for Musk and I don't really see Meta as being the kind of outfit to learn that lesson.

"personal support between friends"

There remains the possibility of dialling the friend's number, putting one end of the phone to your ear and talking.

Millions of unimportant drones scrambling to spaff as much of their PI all over the Internet as possible.

Give ‘till it hurts, make a few people very wealthy!

You, you there, what’s your name, address and inside leg measurement?

Quick!

Until aggregated in databases and demanded by governments intent on silencing opposition.

It would be better named

FUNGUS

That sort of describes all of these channels perfectly

Zuck has been actively evil even longer than Elmo. Are you really going to trade in Trump for Hitler just because Trump hasn't been doing enough to kill non-white people lately?

Okay, bad analogy because MAGA voters are fine with both Trump and Hitler ('he had some very important ideas!'), but I'm not going for either.

Everyone I don't like is Trump or Hitler.

Because the chirpers needed a bigger vacuum nozzle thrust into those meaningful and wholesome lives.

If they had meaningful and wholesome lives, they wouldn't need to be on social media.

For me - and, I expect, fellow Brits of a similar age - the name Threads immediately conjures up memories of that nightmarish made-for-TV move about a nuclear war.

(for any left-pondians who may not be familiar with this reference...around the same time your country released a move called The Day After - basically Threads made that look like Noddy Goes To Toyland)

If anyone ever convinces me to join this Threads thing, my avatar will be the traffic warden with the bandaged face.

the name Threads immediately conjures up

I came here to say exactly the same thing.

[1]BBC Homepage

[2]Wikipedia Article

[3]BBC Culture retrospective

Zuck's marketing department didn't see that one coming. Or perhaps we're just old codgers who were too young and impressionable in the early 1980s and no-one else cares.

M.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02kgkkg

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(1984_film)

[3] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190925-was-threads-the-scariest-tv-show-ever-made

> Financial information is also accessible, as are health and fitness data, messages, photos and videos, and even voice or sound recordings.

> Also up for grabs are files and documents, calendar events, contacts, the app's behavior, web browsing history, and device IDs.

Wow.

I'm not a huge user of twitter, but I find Instagram is now pretty much useless, I see like, what, 10 posts from friends, the rest is all sponsored content. If I don't check it for a while, I can scroll a few times then it tells me I'm all caught up, social media my ass

Both Instagram and Facebook have appalling UIs. Fully expect Threads to be similarly convoluted.

BUT, would love to see sufficient migration from twitter to threads to give Elon an almighty financial black eye for ruining Twitter (as was best of bad bunch?)

Am I the only one that sees that logo as an invitation to tie oneself into knots.

But that matches my opinion on these tools quite well.

"leaving Musk with a bird in the hand and very little in the bush other than the massive debt he incurred to acquire the avian network"

Come off it, where's the unbiased reportage. Ever since Musk bought Twitter the media have done nothing but trash him. Some people are angry he took away their toy.

Some other shit service I don’t need to and won’t sign up to.